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The Pirate Bay Facing "Old Fashioned" Pressure
Jety writes "Ars Technica has an article reporting that The Pirate Bay is facing legal pressure from a new front. A wealthy musician with a track record for going head-to-head with record labels and little kids is now joining the queue to take a legal swing at TPB. What I find particularly interesting about this article is the description of the 'camera-toting investigators following [The Pirate Bay admins] around in cars marked with Danish plates.' One TPB admin asks, '"What do they think they can find out by following us around? Everything we do is digital.'"
Down with the Clowns for God's Sake! When will it end?!
I think that they COULD find out what they do by following them around. But the years of training of these pirates has turned them into a ninja/pirate combination, taking the best from both worlds, ending the age-old argument, and allowing them to stay concealed.
That's game. Blouses win.
The post formerly known as first post.
Something bad happening to one or two P2P site admins could give new meaning to the "MAFIAA" moniker of the RIAA/MPAA/CRIA.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
It's good to know that in Sweden cops have options beyond boxes of donuts. ;P
If I were them, I'd be very careful about jaywalking, cramping my wheels to the curb, and making sure my mattress tags were intact. It's called a shitlist; an idea not entirely unfamiliar to TPB admins, I'm sure.
I wouldn't go as far as to call this a dupe. But being sue friendly seems to be the only way Prince seems to be relevent to the modern world
If it wasn't for him trying to sue everybody from torrent sites to little kids, he proberbly would be forgotten
Make SELinux enforcing again!
...it's not a dying genre, it's the PIRAAAATTEESSS.
A "wealthy musician?" Seriously?
It's Prince. Or that symbol thingy. Or TAFKAP (I think I know what one of those "A"s stands for).
The summary seems unnecessarily coy about exactly who's behind this.
Peter Sunde, a Pirate bay admin, tells Ars that the Purple One's legal team has already started leaning on some advertisers to drop support for the site. "We're not even worried, since the Internet is too big for morally upset people to get it their way," Sunde said in an e-mail. "I'm just sad that Prince--whose music I really like--can't understand that he's the new Metallica versus Napster. And we all know who lost that..."
Uhhh...yeah, Napster did.
Could someone please tell me how TPB is somehow offering some new business model for the people who make the music?
The record labels are told people will still keep illegally distributing music because the labels aren't providing it online. The record labels finally give in and provide it online, and they're told that people will still keep illegally distributing music because they don't like DRM and 99 cents a song is somehow too high.
The only business model a lot of people here seemed to support was AllofMP3, but honestly 10 cent non-DRMed songs really isn't a viable business model, as much as everyone wants it to be.
Might help if they didn't call use the word 'pirate' in their name.
It just seems like they chose the name to invite attack, rather than fly under the radar.
Just sayin'.
I think he's trying to revive 1999, when the whole file sharing vs. MAFIAA thing started evolving into lawsuits. Ah! The good old days!
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
It's because of Prince's "War on the Internet" where he did ridiculous crap like using a DMCA Takedown Notice against someone who dared make fair use of a 30 second clip of one of his songs, before that he sued websites with "unauthorized" pictures of him. Now, apparently, he's hiring PIs to intimidate the Pirate Bay folks. Next week, he'll probably do some other dumb thing.
And yes, whenever he does dumb things, they probably will get press. Believe me, it's not because anyone LIKES that Purple Weirdo. If you've ever had the misfortune of seeing his web page, he writes like it's one long SMS message. If someone were to replace it with goatse, it would be an improvement.
If we're lucky, we'll see a Media-Defender type leak at some point and he'll crawl back under a rock.
Ignoring taking sides over if Pirate Bay should be allowed to exist or not, is this worth it for Prince?
Money probably isn't an issue for him, so count that almost completely out (-.01)
This can't help him sell records I would imagine, image (-1)
Any publicity is good publicity? (+.2)
More people buy his record after not being able to find it on PB (doubt it ?)
A personal victory for Prince (he must really dislike Pirate Bay or I don't see why bother). Maybe he wants to help out other artists that don't want to attempt getting in the news for this.
You, sir, are the winner.
Duh, they're trying to catch you stealing all that music and software!
What, doesn't Sweden have laws against stalking? Because that's what this sounds like to me.
Just because Prince is some big star doesn't give him any special rights. Well, outside of America anyways. If Hollywood had any influence there, the TPB admins would already be in jail.
So go for it - sue Prince for harrassment and stalking.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
You fail it!
The subject of the sentence is "A wealthy musician" not "A wealthy musician and little kids". The singular conjugation "is" is correct.
Please report to your nearest Mother Superior for the appropriate punishment.
Yes, his irrelevance is exactly why Prince sold out the O2 arena recently all 21 nights he was in London. Prince isn't burning up the charts any more, but he's hardly been forgotten, "proberbly" or otherwise.
We have your limited edition Star Wars Princess Leia figurine still in its original packaging.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
What I find particularly interesting about this article is the description of the 'camera-toting investigators following [The Pirate Bay admins] around in cars marked with Danish plates.' One TPB admin asks, '"What do they think they can find out by following us around? Everything we do is digital.'"
Anything they *can* find out, is what. Building up a criminal or civil case is all about setting up the dominoes of very basic and boring evidence. When they go to a judge and say "we want to search this location, it's the offices of Pirate Bay", the judge wants to see something beyond "we talked to this guy who knows this guy who said it's in this building." He wants to see that it's an office building, you go there regularly, etc.
Plus, if they're the cops, they're looking for anything that will legally get them inside your car, business, or home.
Also, I find the term "old fashioned pressure" to be hilariously misused here. The nice people sue. The mean ones may try the lawyers and politicians- and then go to the muscle.
TBP has got to be rolling in dough from advertisers. They should probably be spending some money on bodyguards and their own PI's (looking for anyone that might decide they've had enough.)
Please help metamoderate.
Prince? That guy has been known to have some not-so-nice friends. Friends that might want to do him a favor. Or, you go to a rough part of town and hire some "friends" who are in it for the money and don't care about the cops.
Prince may wear a lot of purple but don't think for a moment that he is going to walk away from a fight. If he believes the way to get his way is with hired thugs, expect to find hired thugs. Probably paid well enough to forget completely about who hired them.
cause they stick it to the man and don't care. Doesn't effect my life one bit so let them continue. If TPB disappears another will take its place.
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
I normally hate all the Ayn Rand crap about how laws are just designed to keep the masses down, but in this case, it provides some context... It doesn't matter if you do everything online. At some point, you step back into the real world, along with real world rules. And that's when you can be caught for a million different things: littering, jaywalking, illegal parking, u-turns, speeding... the list is endless. If you're serious about taking someone out, don't do a frontal attack. Instead, sneak around the back and get them by surprise. Their site is firewalled and legally unassailable? Get them for something else. Tax evasion, anyone? If nothing else, the constant harassment will cause the admins to blow up at some point, and to provide some camera fodder.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Forget the "business-model" talk, what is needed is a new model for searching for torrents so sites like Pirate Bay, Demonoid, and the like are no longer needed. Has anyone here investigated: 1) Building a distributed torrent database on the millions of machines that currently host the target files? 2) Discovery protocols to locate machines hosting a distributed database. 3) Use of IRC or NetNews for a distributed database. The BitTorrent protocol works so well because of the distributed nature of the target files - no single point-of-failure. We need a similarly robust database of torrents to eliminate the single point-of-failure that exists in the form of the torrent search sites.
Prince literally gives away his latest album with a newspaper in the UK, completely devaluing his music and brand, but when people copy his music he gets p*ssed off?
Maybe he's realised that if he doesn't have tons of money that he won't be able to attract sexy models anymore?
An attitude like that is likely to make following them around very fruitful
some artists formerly known als being successful will do anything to get some press coverage...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
What do they think they can find out by following us around? Everything we do is digital.
Perhaps they are trying to dig up dirt about the admins for a good old fashioned blackmail mud-slinging political match ala J. Edgar Hover and the old school politicos or maybe they are just trying to intimidate the admins (i.e. black suburbans, helicopters, and guys in SWAT vests with 'RIAA' velcroed to the back). The best thing that the admins could do in response would be to keep reporting what is going on in their blogs and other public places on the Internet. This will help discourage these pseudo agents from arranging an 'accident' or some other more overt form of persuasion because everyone will know who was responsible.
Only you seem to be focusing on deriding the people who don't pay directly for their copies of music (according to our brief custom of the last 70 years).
Why is it so hard to see that its ok to let companies with no practical business model die off? I know it becomes a touchy subject when we bring art into the picture, but the spirit of copyright law is to promote the creation of art, not to give business models to musicians. It seems particularly hard for people of the last couple generations to fathom that music (or art in general) can be created without being paid for copies of their work. They can't see that the true value in art is the process by which it is created, that is what is rare. This value can still be monetized, and a business model can be developed around it (think service instead of product).
Even if you don't want to or can't believe this old school view of art, you will face the reality of digital technology. Copying is only going to get faster and more convenient. Distributed technology will only get more robust. Controlling the location of 1s and 0s will become increasingly futile. No laws will be able to reverse this, no amount of yelling thief at a generation of hungry minds will hold them back.
What do you think will happen when 1 million 3rd world kids get on the internet through OLPC? What happens when they reach 10 million in the next few years? Can you seriously expect them to even consider intellectual property with an open source key on their keyboard?
Right now there are more people with cell phone in China than there are people alive in the USA. What happens when there are more Chinese online than people in the US? What happens when the same goes for India? Do you think these huge amount of people wont be able to find a way to adapt open source software for their needs? When they are completely bypassing proprietary western solutions, what good will our DMCA do?
So I laugh at the moral indignation of the slighted intellectual property holders. Right now I am stealing. I'm robbing those who were lucky enough to get fat from an unworkable system. Luckily, the system is changing and I wont have to steal in the future. Still, every time they yell thief I feel more like Robin Hood, and I'm not the only one.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
Metallica versus Napster was never about illegal downloads, it was about setting precedent which basically scared the s*** out of everyone in the music industry. You COULD NOT distribute music online (let alone sell it). Either you were under contract (which made use of Napster illegal) or you were stuck with terrible alternatives like Kazaa or Limewire. Two years later the iTunes Store comes out and the RIAA starts shitting themselves over Apple's success. (Not to mention the legal disputes).
I can 100% promise if i was ever raided, the first guy through my door with RIAA on his vest is getting my fist in his face.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
...which would be followed by several jolts from the Tazers (i.e. don't taze me bro....eeaaaahhhh!) of his fellow raiders.
price - prince - same (freudian) difference..
same overall effect, too.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
arr I be's tak'in a holiday in Iraq me hearties, all ye laggards can follow if yah wish...arrr. See how long they follow you with a camera when bullets start flying their way.
Congratulations, you've just proven yourself to be far more stupid than the President. At least he was just wrong, but you were correcting someone and were wrong. This man is why democracy will never work.
I think he probably means did Metallica stop piracy. Which they didn't. Napter is probably a bad choice, but for a the legal noise that surrounded it P2P sharing was just getting started, it didn't stop and barely slowed down.
Quack, quack.
It would still be a case of the worth its
Dear god, Prince, have mercy. Don't send Appolonia Kotero and Sheila E, and certainly not while wearing lingerie.
And if you have a soul, for the love of all that's holy don't send Sheena Easton, especially not speaking in character as Annah from Planescape:Torment. Rawr. Er, I mean Oh No!
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
I can understand why Prince would be tempted to attack the P2P culture. As far back as the early 90s, he was one of the most bootlegged artists around. Seriously- I have hundreds of live shows, along with a ton of unreleased songs, on my hard drive. At least 20% of my 60 GB iPod is made up of Prince music, both released and unreleased. If all you know Prince for is Purple Rain, you're missing out on an artist with a passion for jazz and funk- he's James Brown and Miles Davis put together with a better voice. I've been grooving to his Vegas 3121 concerts and his concert at Montreux for the last few months, and they are SWEET. But this solution is just nuts. Killing the Pirate Bay and YouTubers isn't going to stop the flow of bootleg tracks. When Prince was a Warner Brothers artist and downloading free music was only a Cory Doctorow dream, the problem was just as bad. When he went on his own, some of his solutions were laughably bad. He sold "Crystal Ball", a 4-CD set, directly to his fans; however, once he had their money, he released the same set (minus the soundtrack to his ballet, which wasn't really why anyone bought the set) to retailers at a lower price, then took up to a year to mail out the copies to the fans who bought them first. His NPG Music Club cost fans hundreds of dollars for very little benefit over the life of the club- 12 "radio shows" that hinted at the vast material in his vaults, one acoustic CD, and preferrential seating at concerts. When he then decided to sell albums directly to fans (the little-known Chocolate Invasion was one), he encoded them in low bit-rate DRM'd Windows Media. I love the music that Prince has made over the years, and I want to pay him for that music. All he'd have to do is hook up with iTunes or Amazon.com and sell high-bit DRM-free MP3s, and he'd be raking in great money. Does he need my money? Of course not; he's one of the richest men in the world. But the best reason for paying an artist isn't because the MPAA or the RIAA forces you to; it's because you want to show respect and thank an artist that has added something to your life. I want to thank Prince by paying him some money. I hope he realizes this someday. PS- if you want to hear some GREAT Prince music, try hunting down the 3121 show from 12/2/06, the Small Club show from 8/18/88, the Montreux Jazz Festival show from 6/16/07, the Paisley Park show with Miles Davis from 12/31/87, or the Fillmore show from San Francisco from 2/14/04.
Dude, you are pirates. They are looking for your ship, and therein, all your booty.
SHOOT IT!
...but one thing is for sure, they aren't planning to win! I find it interesting how people fail to plan for their goals to be reached or their dangers to be avoided. Criminals plan to execute their crimes, but they rarely if ever plan to not be caught. These people are planning on executing their whimsical actions, but they aren't planning for their results to be successful. Play it out in your minds in any way you like, but aside from assassination, this line of activity isn't going to result in an end to the pirate bay and it's not going to end in a cease in people trading copyrighted material. (here's a hint: nothing will! learn to find the balance that gains maximum profit from the lowest price that will keep most people honest enough to buy it if they like it. illegitimate copying is an intrinsic part of dealing in this form of intellectual property. It always has been and always will be.)
In particular, in some places such as the USA it is a crime to provide a service that abets illegal file sharing. In other places, though the filesharing might be illegal, providing metadata about shared files is legal. In those places, you have to go after the sharers because running the tracker is legal see footnote 9 . Sharers are like roaches: there's a million born every day and they're coming out of the woodwork. There's little evidence that suing a few hundred sharers alters the behavior of the unsued millions. So for Prince, going after trackers is the only sensible option, even if trackers are located where trackers are legal (one wonders when or if the RIAA will ever come to this conclusion). So Prince is desparate. Suing fans, the only legal remedy, may be counter productive. He's left with trying to intimidate the tracker operators.
The bigger picture here is we're watching the collapse of a business model, and there's no replacement in sight. If musicians can't make money, they won't record. On the other hand, the record labels have earned the ire and disrepect of many fans, and the labels are practically impotent. We're watching dinosaurs die, and we have no idea what will replace them.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Prince alone in the studio It's two a.m. and all the girls are gone The girls thought they were going to be able To have sex with him They wore their special underwear Once the tracks were laid down Prince's back turned around Raspberry headphones on his head On his ears Prince alone in the studio It's three a.m. Prince hasn't eaten in eighteen hours Dinner's burned on the stove But Prince, he doesn't even know Prince alone in the studio It's four a.m. And he finally gets that guitar track right And it's better than anything any girl could ever give him Because Prince is alone Prince is alone Oh Prince, you are so alone And when it's all complete He feels like a hunter on the street And when it's all complete He feels like a hunter on the street
I wonder what would happen if the pirate bay admins suddenly hired their own people to follow Prince around.
Seriously, people that would take pictures of his every move, looking for something embarrassing to publish in...
oh....never mind
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
If you are on the Internet and take a poke at The Purple One (and I'm not referring to Barney the Dinosaur), he will send his lawyers at you. Last week B3ta took down their Purple One image challenge as apparently he didn't share the humour in it.
I prefer TAFKAT (The Artist Formerly Known As Talented).
All these has-been stadium acts looking for any excuse to get a little more limelight is a bit sad, though I suppose it's bettter than the Gary Glitter option.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Do you also say "Windows security?"
This is a crock. Many, if not most of the bands out there are not making any profits off the labels so nothing will change on that front. Also, not every band out there does it for the money. Many do it for *GASP* the music or *GASP* the recognition for the real money maker, concerts. In the days before big mega media corps, many bands released their music to their local radio stations for this recognition. When was the last time you heard one on your local radio? Maybe it's time to break up the stranglehold the labels have on the media market. Maybe it is time the labels cartel was broken up starting with the RIAA itself.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
The Pirate Bay Facing "Old Fashioned" Pressure
Sounds more like good old-fashioned harrassment to me.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If they'd come out with 99 cent tracks in 1998, it might have worked. They fought it for a decade, and now it's too late for that price point.
They can sell me 256 kbps mp3s for 10 cents a track or less (with at least 9 cents going directly to the artist), or I will get them for free.
I don't know if that was lyrics to a song I don't know, avant garde poetry, or the ramblings of a madman.
TRHOnline - Staggering Towards Brilliance
But I'm afraid that, especially with his "War on the Internet" going on, it really makes him look like a douche.
Did some research into this, since I was all for hearing about lawyers making fools of themselves.
However, I don't think that actually happened... See FAQ 1.5 at
http://web.archive.org/web/20010803004755/http://pan.rebelbase.com/faq.html (as of Aug 3, 2001)
Given that they are nerds, the showering and shaving is almost certainly virtual, and what they rub is likely almost so.
"If musicians can't make money, they won't record."
This is a non-sequitur.
First of all, the collapse of the RIAA has almost nothing to do with musicians making money. I take that back... it makes it more likely that the average musician will make money.
But It makes it less likely that older acts like Prince who depend primarily on an older back-catalog for income and who currently makes a lot of money from the old business model. I can appreciate his dilemma, although I have no sympathy. His quandary is that he's already earned most of the money he's going to earn and thus would prefer he keeps making money on work he did 20 years ago. I wish I had that gig.
Anyway, musicians will record because without the RIAA it's more likely that "middle class" musicians can thrive. It's now profitable to sell 20,000 CD's. Under the RIAA regime, that kind of act will not continue, because that will net the musician nothing. In the new order, selling on iTunes, Amazon, or direct will gross perhaps $200K. That's enough to encourage some acts until they can 100,000 albums directly to consumer. All the sudden, a moderate sized act can hit $1M without the record company scooping up most of it.
Tough luck to prince though. Maybe he can go back into the studio and become creative again. Life is a bitch when you can't depend on old royalty checks. Kinda like the rest of the world.
Dude, this is /. You can't just reference arcane details from TFA like that without explaining where they're from, lest you suffer death by 1,000 "offtopic" mods.
Pi Ran Out
What do they think they can find out by following us around? Everything we do is digital.
Oh, that's easily explained. You see, Prince is very wealthy and completely insane. So, if Prince throws $60,000 your way and says "follow these people", you stfu and do what he says. It doesn't matter if anything comes of it. It doesn't matter if it's worthwhile. It doesn't matter if there's no point. And there isn't. Any information they collect will likely sit in storage somewhere until all of his copyrights expire (which, thanks to Disney, will never happen).
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Danskjävlar!!!
...this is just some form of old fashioned subtle strong arming!
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
Which means, less one-day, only-for-money crap, that somehow got qualified as "music" this days? No new albums from Beyonce, Shakira, J Lo and the likes? Where do I sign up?
May Peace Prevail On Earth
(dum, dum, dum) Another hoax bites the dust.
If musicians can't make money, they won't record.
Dire straits, Sultans of swing.
Listen to the song and hear what it is about.
There are countless musicians who got a day time job to support their hobby, at best they recoup a bit of their costs at times but mainly it is a hobby AKA a moneysink.
When I was young a neighbour of mine operated a pirate radio station. He bought all the gear, bought records, payed for the power and for what? A few small ads? Did he become rich of it or even break even? Hell no, but it was his dream, his hobby.
If all musicians are out of a job tomorrow, the music will go on. And personally, I think the music will be a lot better or at least more varied, because people will play what they want to play, not what sells best.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The first HUNDRED FUCKING COMMENTS are of the nauseating amateur-comedy-hour variety that get modded up rather than sent to oblivion where they belong.
Even the summary is shitty. Way to ironically make a feeble gesture against Prince by not mentioning him by name.
Actually... in a rational world, actions like this would be lauded rather than mindlessly criticized. Unfortunately the dominant meme here is that information should be forced to be free and anyone opposing that philosophy using any means should be demonized.
Right on, Prince. You've made some of the best music, you're an intellectual maverick, and you aren't part of the problem regardless of how many insipid comments get positive moderation on a communist geek site.
Filesharing took a blow from the closing of napster? Can I have some, the stuff you are smoking? You know that you can't smoke enough of it to stop breast cancer don't you? But I see that ain't stopping you from trying.
Ahh, good stuff.
When napster hit the headlines in its protracted legal battle all that happened was that LOTS of people found out about napster and filesharing. Every single time such an article comes in the headlines I hear people asking, so how does this work anyway, can I do it?
Once there was usenet, and it was good but few used it. Then there was napster, and it was better, but its usage was limited. Then came the kazaa's and god knows what more, and it started to explode and now there is bittorrent and the majority of network traffic is that protocol, and no I don't think a lot of its linux torrents.
Saying the filesharing took a blow is like saying that... well the war on drugs has dealt a blow to the drugs trade. Except less so.
You are aware that bittorrent traffic is now the majority of network traffic?
If napster HADN'T closed down, if it had simply been left to be, then it might have turned out like usenet, used by a small group but ultimately not spreading because most never hear about it.
All these stories do is free publicity. Napster died, but filesharing flourished. As for what Metallica won, they didn't gain anything from the legal victory but lost an awfull lot of reputation. If you look at their sales results, they are now in a steady decline. That might be age, or it might be the backlash of a horrific PR blunder. If you were paying attention back then, they were heavily critized.
And for what? They didn't get anything, except that people made a point out of putting their music on file share networks.
Maybe not quite a pyrrhic victory, but close.
Prince is doing the same thing, these megarich popstars just don't seem to realize that they just ain't that popular as people. We, the public, do NOT shed a tear when someone making millions cries about lost income. I remember a joke by Jim Carry where he lamented on this: "I feel troubled, ever since I became famous people just don't seem to genuinly care anymore" "Oh boohoo, stop crying and GET OUT OF MY CHURCH". I horribly mangled the joke, but the point is true, rich people don't get a lot of symphaty. We may idolize them, buy all their crap, but only on the clear understanding they don't moan about how we are stealing from them.
Metallica did it, and became a joke. Prince is doing it and, well continues to be a joke.
Will the piratebay survive? Unsure, demonoid is still down and lots of other torrent sites are in legal trouble BUT for everyone that goes down another springs up and someone somewhere is coming up with an even better program/protocol that will be even harder to defeat and more people will be using it thanks to the free publicity.
When napster was around, I was one of the few in my circle to use it. Nowadays I don't know anyone with a computer who doesn't fileshare. Oh yeah, Metallica won alright. I wonder how you would define a loss.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Why can't the AllofMP3 model you metion work? Why is it not a valid business model?
99 cents a song is insanely high, a few megabyte of data at 99 cents? Just where is all the money going? Someone, somewhere is making a hell of a profit out of those iTunes sales. (Most likely the credit card companies)
AllOfMP3 had a simple business plan, use a balance, so that you limit the transaction costs, and sell the music with a minimum profit.
This last bit is very hard to get into the music industry's collective brains and apparently yours. JUST BECAUSE A CD COSTS X, DOES NOT MEAN THAT DIGITAL ALBUM HAS TO COST X.
What happened to passing savings on to the customer?
Stop bending over for the RIAA and they lackey's. 99 cents for a few megabytes of data that you can reproduce for a trivial ammount is far too high. Insane profit margins are NOT a natural right.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Right on. I make music, I don't charge a penny for it, and I have no intention of ever getting "signed", no matter how good people think my music is.
Anybody who thinks music is about money can fuck off. It isn't. The definition of art is something that people create solely for its own purpose.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
I fail to understand why people who create "art" has the right to earn such enormous amounts of money?
I have not seen or heard of any rich research scientist. There are certainly none were i work. We earn enough to put food on the table and that is it. There is no patent or copyright protection of our work(you cannot copy three consecutive notes from a piece of music, but you can sure copy more than three symbols from our math) and yet science is created. How can this be? The framework which aim was to promote intellectual pursuits is not valid for hard science. It is too important for humanity that we can all share in scientific advance.
Then what is the point of intellectual property? If it is deemed such a hindrance for progress that it must be invalid for the "important" fields? Why must we have special protection for music, literature, art, inventions when pure science is exempt?
Furthermore the exemption has shown that the protection is not necessary. Basic research is still being done. Even if I only earn
the same as a nurse or a police officer. But that is OK. I get to earn a living at doing what I think is interesting. Why should it be different for artists?
I'd rephrase it as If bad musicians can't make money, they won't record>/i>
If money was the only reason to make music you wouldn't see a single jazz musician around, regardless of piracy they sell close to nothing compared to chart stars, but they're still around. Piracy will hopefully help us to get rid of bad musicians, wannabe artists and millionaires who have no clue about art. Do not expect the good ones to go away though.
musician with a track record for going head-to-head with record labels and little kids....
I thought it was Michael Jackson for a moment....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
That's like what Bernoulli and Boyle studied, right?
I am saying, don't expect me to give a damn. I am a baker by training. A good one, but YOU buying YOUR bread in the supermarket and insisting on zoning laws that don't allow me to have the bakery attached to the shop have put me out of business.
Times change, I had to give up my dream, why should you be any different?
Society does NOT own you the right to make a living in your chosen career. Only a lucky few manage that.
Unless you support goverment action to protect all kinds of other jobs that are dying out, I don't see my musicians should be given any more special threatment then they already get. Check how much money already goes to the arts. You need my taxes AND my spending money? Greedy much?
I wish you luck, if you make it, congrats. BUT do NOT expect me to subsidize a dying industry unless you are willing to do the same for mine. Show me the receipts from your local butcher, baker and grocer for the last decade and I will buy your album, but if you shopped at a supermarket just once, the deal is off. You don't care about my career, I don't care about yours.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
>The Pirate Bay folks should be able to insist that the cops leave behind all the protons and neutrons that are their rightful property.
D00d, someone should write a play about that shit.
You wish. It won't happen: you will try to raise your puny fist and the burly, muscular RIAA agent will catch you and say "So what, girlie?" and snap your wrist with barely an effort. He will then punch you in the stomach and while still screaming from pain you will double over, and he will beat the crap out of you.
Because you're a nerd, and a nerd has no hope when confronted with anyone stronger than a hummingbird.
"This is a crock. Many, if not most of the bands out there are not making any profits off the labels so nothing will change on that front. Also, not every band out there does it for the money. Many do it for *GASP* the music or *GASP* the recognition for the real money maker, concerts. In the days before big mega media corps, many bands released their music to their local radio stations for this recognition. When was the last time you heard one on your local radio? Maybe it's time to break up the stranglehold the labels have on the media market. Maybe it is time the labels cartel was broken up starting with the RIAA itself."
don't you think we should *GASP* give the musicians a choice? Also, when you don't make shit from concerts unless you are signed with a label.
Actually, most small record companies also are not making any off their artists. They just organize things as a way to promote music and as a hobby. Also, you can listen A LOT of music for free on myspace for example. Why not just go there, if you want this stuff for free? The ugly truth is that if it weren't for record labels and RIAA, the artists would probably never get ANY money for their work. And in the times when there really weren't big record companies, artists were being ripped off BIG TIME by concert organizers. You can read about this stuff from band biographies like Led Zeppelin... ugly stuff.
My wife has a friend that does security for concerts at the major venues in town, so we got free floor tickets to Metallica. This was a "theater in the round" sort of event and I ended up about two or three people away from the stage. I was standing directly in front of James Hetfield when he said, "Here is one off of our new album, St Anger. Have you all gotten it yet". Now I had been drinking a little that evening and apparently my volume knob was turned up a little louder than usual because I replied "Yea, It's great. I downloaded it last night!" and everyone as far as I could see turned and looked at me and started laughing. I guess James heard it to, because he looked down and gave me a little smile.
I'm a DJ at WTUL in New Orleans, and I can assure you the non-payola, independent driven radio market is still out there. We have two two-hour local shows devoted to only playing New Orleans local music and we never play top 40 hits any time of the week! We play local bands like Morning 40 Federation, the New Orleans Bingo! Show, the Ballywho, and Quintron which are just the tip of a very weird and wacky totally commercial-free music scene down here. We get these records straight from the artists, too! Often we bring them into the studio and have them bang a number out once and awhile even... I'm proud to be a part of a system that is pulling by its own bootstraps and making art and music for its own sake!
...and it should be known by now
Standard intimidation tactics. Clear evidence that they don't appear to have anything else that stands up legally.
Counter action: take pictures, go to them, take down details. Keep doing it until they either try to do something that will land them in jail or until you have enough evidence of stalking - an offence in most countries and you can ask for police protection.
After all, you don't know why they're doing it, the US is known for "extracting" people without due process (or even acknowledging that they're not at home) and the RIAA has been shown to use legally questionable tactics. And don't buy any further records from the short idiot formally known as "someone who occasionally makes a good record". He ought to know better.
The Long Tail theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail applies to music as well. Applying it to the distribution of artist popularity, we see that the sum of popularity of the numerous little-known artists (the tail) exeeds the sum for the few well-known artists (the head). The nature of the music label industry makes only "the head" profitable and therefore visible. With the file-sharing technologies of today, "the tail" has a unique chance of reaching massive audiences.
Also, only the absolute best-selling artists make more money on record sales than performances. This kind of explains Princes reaction. This is also why the record labels are doomed; file-sharing is eating from their profit source, where as lesser-known independent artists gain from file-sharing. In other words, record sales is to be viewed merely as PR nowadays.
Additionally, consumers willingness to pay for records has decreased while it has increased for live-performances. As a side note, this arguably reflects our modern world. Music is available anywhere, anytime, for free; consumers value music less. What remains is "real experiences", that can not be experienced anywhere, anytime, infinitely many times, exactly the same next time... each event is unique, in the performance itself, in the audience-composition etc. I think the keyword here is _unique_, i.e. price worthy.
But most listeners don't really have a taste for the FOB-AUD stuff. Most listeners prefer multitrack recorded, post session mixed, with any flubs patched. Thats the vast majority of the music that gets traded on thepiratebay and demonoid (RIP). That's the business that's circling the drain as we watch.
With the death of the RIAA music business, I do sorta wonder how bands will rise to national and international prominence. I'm not saying there will never be rock stars again, but I do wonder what the mechanism will be. I'm well awasre that the RIAA music business ripped off Janice Ian and Roger McGuinn (scroll past Lars) and most other not-quite-superstar musicians. But I honestly wonder: without the RIAA based music business, would we ever have heard of Buddy Holly or the Byrds? Would there have been a national pool where talent could rise to the top?
Now I'm not saying that still happens. According to David Crosby the tides in the talent pool have been pulling all wrong for a long time. I'm not even saying that the RIAA based dinosaurs don't deserve to die. What I am saying is that for 60 or more years, the music industry has maintained a sort of cultural commons -- has provided a meaningful soundtrack for each generation from WWII on -- so that people from far away could join together with shared music. And I'm not trying to be snarky; I truly wonder, when (not if) the RIAA based music industry dies, what will fill in this cultural commons?
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices cried out in terror...
I'm just glad Cliff Burton died when he did. I would hate to think of him coming back and seeing what had become of them.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Why doesn't the industry go directly after the people who start the seed for the copyrighted material?? Pirate Bay is doing them a favor by providing a helpful link directly to them! ;)
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Ahh, I miss Fugazi and their enlightened business ethics... (and hey, the music was pretty good too :)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
What can Prince really do that the US Government, RIAA, MPAA, and their international cousins haven't managed already?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
That's simply not true. Many will continue to make music - specifically, those that actually care about MUSIC rather than MONEY will. So even if the latter kind disappears (something that I honestly don't believe in myself; one man's crisis is another man's opportunity), who cares? If somebody says "oh, looks like I can't earn my living anymore this way, so I'll just leave music be forever", then good riddance.
Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to make a living (from music or otherwise), not at all. But if that's the SOLE reason why you're making music, and if you'll give up as soon as the flow of money stops, then you never cared about the music, and I'll definitely say "good riddance".
When someone from slashdot creates something market-worthy, it's almost always software. Software has a very different life-cycle than music- very few people are buying copies of 'Wing Commander' or 'Lotus 1-2-3' nowadays, even though those were huge programs in their time. Neither of those programs is making money for their creator anymore.
With music, on the other hand, if I manage to make a top 10 song they'll be playing it for the rest of my lifetime, and my label will be getting a steady stream of revenue for the next 100 years, which they may share with me. Actually, I think music is the only profession where this is the case- very few books or movies last long enough to provide this near-eternal revenue stream. With most artists, once all the money is spent on drugs and hookers, they need to create more art to feed themselves: with music it's not always the case.
There's nothing morally wrong with this revenue stream, it's just very different from how most people make money. And, naturally, when musicians act like it's their right to keep making money of the good work they produced 20 years ago, it annoys the people who notice only musicians have that right.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
It used to be the land of the free, and the home of the brave,
but all I see are herds of sheep, and ideological slaves.
So ends the republic.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Listening to you little whiners b*tch and moan about your right to steal someone else's work. The excuses you manage to come up with to justify your criminality are simply astounding. And stating that artists don't have a right to make so much money anyway!?! Man. What a hoot.
Ah, it occurs to me that different nations and states have different laws
As I am in a particularly nerdily humorous mood today, I must point out that all nations have the same speed limit.
The bigger picture here is we're watching the collapse of a business model, and there's no replacement in sight.
I'm reminded of the scene in Hot Shots Part Deux with Saddam Hussein in bed. Or perhaps Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles.
If musicians can't make money, they won't record.
If pigs had wings... Look, musicians made money long before Tommie Edison was ever born. And they'll keep making money long after the record labels (may they rot in hell) die.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Hmmm, between the amount of actual albums I own and have ripped (I think it's about 30+, not a huge amount), the tunes which I have legally downloaded online (the late mp3.com, garageband), and music I have bought online I have filled several DVD's. At 4.3GB of music per DVD, and 3-5 DVD's that about 13-22GB of music. I know people with *much* more in terms of albums than me. Not necessarily $5000 worth, but plenty.
I believe the newer iPods do video too, which would likely fill them up much faster. 160GB isn't really that unreasonable.
One also has to consider those that consider bigger=better, and iPod size is a status symbol. Even if the wankers only use 2GB of music, they'll brag about their fancy 160GB toy.
And how useful that is depends on how you use it. Maybe you have 160GB of music. You might not listen to every song straight through, but you'd like to have various music for different occasions. Maybe you have all your NiN albums, and all your Elton John stuff. Sometimes you're in the mood for one, sometimes the other.
Or you could be into jogging. Sure you won't listen to 24/7 30 days straight, but you can crank on random playlists each jog for unique music a year 'round. Heck, for people like me, I often have music on while I work - it makes the day go faster - so that's still 8h of the day 5 days a week. Personally I prefer just uploading new songs every now and then, but some people like to have it all there at their fingertips.
Following them around will lead them to TPB's buried treasure... yarrr
Technology routinely renders old business models obsolete and doesn't necessarily replace them
One thing that people seem to not pay attention to is also this: technology may cost them money in R&D, because their old distribution methods are dying, but it's saving them a shitload of money in production. Equipment for digitally editing music (or movies) is increasingly powerful and lower in cost. Equipment for duplicating (not just by the pirates, but the corps themselves) is increasingly faster and lower in cost.
These companies really do want to have their cake and eat it too. They are in many cases saving massive amounts of cash through the use of modern technology, yet aren't willing to switch the rest of their business model over to embracing it for fear of lessening their *control*
No. Their work is mostly derivative.
This is important to acknowledge so you don't make the mistake of treating
their work as their sole creation and also realize that the next guy to
come along will have to pick up afterwards.
The situation is quite nicely compared to the BSD whiner that complains about
being "forced" to share work that they view is theirs but is clearly a derivative
work. They have no problem taking but object to giving as much as they've taken.
They also confuse something that's %1 theirs with something that is 100% theirs.
If you did with physical things what artists do with creative works you would
be thrown in jail under laws banning various forms of theft and destruction
of public property.
There is a reason that copyright was not originally setup as an individual right.
Certain people understood the derivative nature of creativity.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I just read the story as:
"A wealthy musician with a track record for going [...] with [...] little kids..."
and thought "Woah. *Gary Glitter* is suing TPB!?"
Technically, either is correct:
A wealthy musician with a track record for going head-to-head with (record labels and little kids) IS...
A wealthy musician (with a track record for going head-to-head with record labels) and little kids ARE...
English is ambiguous, but yes, the top version is "correct".
Commas and parentheses are your friends.
The job of most private investigators is to gather enough dirt on someone so that their client can have a lever to extort the behavior they want out of someone.
So YOU'RE just after free stuff too.
Or was what you said just a load of cliffski-cocksucking gobshite?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"We shouldn't deliberately protect their business model at any cost. Noone is restricting their choices on purpose. If it happens that the model they choose is non-viable, too bad for them."
The same laws that protect the musicians also protect licenses like the GPL. You should remember this. Also, the model is only non-viable because of dishonest users giving out their music for free. It would be viable without a label, if people were a little more honest about purchasing music.
"I do. RMS himself stated that, were there no copyright, there would simply be no need for GPL."
There would still be a need for the GPL. Companies could still take the source, make additions, and release the binaries with no copyright laws. The end user could copy the binary with no legal implications, but they would not be able to learn from the source. Isn't this the point of the GPL? to learn? and even if there were no copyright laws, commercial software vendors would move their products online (software as a service).
"Selling air would be more viable too if people were "honest" and would buy it even though they could get it for free. But they don't, and it's not. It's not any more bad or unfair than the fact that water is wet."
All companies violating the GPL are fair too then..right? I say it's not a viable license anymore because I can just close the source and release it without giving back to the community. However, The zealots disagree with me. I don't think we should protect it in the US court system. Why protect a dying licensing model?
This is just supply and demand in action. The cost of making a t-shirt is close to zero. They're just pricing it to maximise their profit. You find it too expensive. I find it too expensive. Fine, someone out there is happy to pay those prices and keep the bands in business.
"Without copyright laws, selling software would be rather pointless, closed-source or not. So there simply wouldn't be any binaries without source."
actually, software would either move to all service based (most likely) or the price would go very high per app (since there would be no way to protect software or prevent sharing, each application would sell for the total cost of R&D).
Fragging story about the rants and ravings about destroying another P2P website or the ludicrous statements by a has-been "Rock Star". Jeez, when are these people going to learn? If the people want music, movies, etc...they'll find ways to get it. Suing the fan base will only infuriate the masses against you and/or every endeavor you participate in. Holy Purple Rain, Prince needs to find another life to lead and get off his mighty purple rock. Leave TPB and every other P2P website alone. Go back to your little doily filled home and reminisce about the good old days when you were able to get hot models to do your videos and get hot women to throw themselves at you. Better yet why don't you try to create some new music that is more relevant to today's youth and not the "Glam Sham" you've been putting out since the 80's.
God, I'm so fragging tired of hearing about how the RIAA/MPAA/MAFIAA/Artists are so pissed about their "ART" being ripped off or infringed upon. I'm tired of hearing about lawsuits being filed against single moms and 12 year old kids. I'm tired of hearing how infringement upon their copyrights is worth at a minimum $750 per song, when you actually pay anywhere from $.70 to $.99 per song on the "legitimate" music sites, but you have to deal with their DRM. I'm tired of hearing about the great "Napster and Metallica" fiasco in the 90's. I'm tired of hearing how our court systems are tied up deliberating copyright laws that are antiquated and useless. How Gene Simmons thinks that all downloaders should be sued out of their homes and belongings and how he doesn't feel the urge to create anymore because of the downloaders. Most of the artists that complain the most are the ones who no longer have a value in today's marketplace. Those who've survived off of the antiquated models of their companies and wish to keep it that way.
Holy conniptions, give it a crapping rest. Move on and accept the inevitable. People will do what they do and not what some corporate a-hole or self righteous musician wants them to do.